Chapter 97: The Memory of Fire

When the little boy cried out the name “Granny Yu,” Tan Yunlong's ears immediately perked up.

He had just mentioned “Granny Yu” to his son that very morning, and by noon, his son called to say he’d found the body of the missing Tang Qiuying.

And he’d also asked him to bring along the case file on “Granny Yu,” saying he’d just dropped by another dorm room and overheard a sleepy classmate muttering that name in his dreams.

So, he suspected this classmate, Lin Shuyou, might have been abducted to Fujian as a child.

Tan Yunlong didn’t buy that kind of nonsense, of course. But he knew his son wouldn’t speak with such confidence in front of him unless he was drawing on some hidden power.

And since it was Little Yuan who wanted the file, of course he’d bring it.

Sure enough, the clues matched up.

Tan Yunlong was getting used to this.

But when the little boy, in his excitement, suddenly started calling himself “Beibei,” Tan Yunlong let out a quiet sigh of relief.

Given the current circumstances, not only was it hard to track down abducted children, but even harder to reunite rescued children with their biological parents.

Human traffickers liked to snatch very young kids and then immediately whisk them away on long-distance buses or trains.

Experienced trafficking rings didn’t operate within a city or province—they used directions like “northeast” or “southwest” as their zones of capture and sale.

Little kids didn’t remember much. Soon they’d forget their past entirely. And the parents—no matter how diligently they tried to record their children’s appearance or habits—would find their notes outdated within half a year.

Worst of all, some traffickers, even when caught, would deliberately hide the truth of their crimes.

Tan Yunlong had seen many heartbroken parents over the years—hollow-eyed mothers and fathers carrying baby photos and old toys as they searched in vain for their children.

He was a father himself. He knew that pain.

If this Yongyong—no, Beibei—could recall more details and narrow down which province or city he came from, it would be a massive help in finding his real family.

Tan Yunlong kept glancing at the boy through the rearview mirror. He hoped the teenager had a way.

“Uncle Tan, Beibei’s hungry. Can we stop ahead to grab some snacks?”

“How long will it take, Little Yuan?”

“Wait for me to call you.”

Tan Yunlong pulled the car over at the next intersection and got out. A patrol car and a police motorcycle passed by. He waved them on and pointed at the small convenience store nearby.

The others headed back to the station.

Tan Yunlong walked a bit further from the car and lit a cigarette under a utility pole. His eyes roamed the street, but his focus never strayed from the police car.

Technically, as the officer who’d apprehended a suspect and rescued an abducted child, he should’ve returned to the station to process things immediately. But he hadn’t hurried Little Yuan. He hadn’t even reminded him to make it quick.

Because he knew the police station was too noisy. There was no way to give Little Yuan and Beibei a quiet space there.

This was better. Clearly, Little Yuan had a method.

Tan Yunlong bit his cigarette and looked back at the car. Through the window, he saw Li Zhuiyuan in the back seat pressing a talisman onto Beibei’s forehead.

The cigarette trembled. Ash fell onto his clothes.

He quickly brushed it off and turned his gaze away.

Inside the car, Beibei stopped crying the moment the Calming Talisman was applied.

The Calming Talisman was meant for the living. It dispelled malevolent influences and, even without any spirits around, it helped soothe and focus the mind.

Sure enough, Beibei quieted down. He wiped away his tears and stared calmly at the older boy.

Li Zhuiyuan held a pen in front of him, signaling him to watch the tip. Slowly, he guided Beibei into a hypnotic rhythm.

Li Zhuiyuan had never formally studied psychology or hypnosis. But he had been the subject of many psychological evaluations and hypnotic sessions himself.

They hadn’t cured his condition, but as the saying goes—long illness makes a doctor of the patient.

Beibei’s eyelids gradually drooped. He slipped into a trance, ready for the “you ask, I answer” stage.

Li Zhuiyuan didn’t start with Granny Yu. That memory was too traumatic. Bringing it up could break the trance.

Instead, he asked about the young parents in Beibei’s earliest memories.

Children’s thinking was underdeveloped. Their language and concepts were limited. You had to discard your adult assumptions and accept what they described on their terms—then decode and reorganize those descriptions.

Luckily, that was not hard for Li Zhuiyuan. Not because he was still young himself, but because the feng shui books he read were often far more cryptic than anything a child could imagine.

Tan Yunlong’s cigarette burned out. He went into the store to buy some drinks, snacks, and two packs of cigarettes. With one teenager and one little kid in the car, he wasn’t worried about safety.

When he came back, he saw Beibei bawling his eyes out in the back seat. Li Zhuiyuan met his gaze and beckoned him over.

Tan Yunlong opened the door and got in. As he passed the snacks and drinks to the back, he asked:

“How’s it going, Little Yuan?”

Li Zhuiyuan showed him the paper he’d written on. It was filled with strange descriptions and phonetic transcriptions.

Tan Yunlong instinctively felt this must be what remained of Beibei’s memories of his true hometown.

“Little Yuan, can you…”

“Uncle Tan, I’ll organize it for you.”

“Good, thanks for your help. Those phonetic parts—are they dialect words?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know which dialect.”

“No problem, we can figure that out.

Heh, if it turns out to be a dialect from Jiangsu or Nantong, it’ll be a lot easier to narrow it down.

Some places use the same dialect across half a province or even the whole province. There might be small differences, but they’re largely similar. Our Nantong alone has four or five dialects, and people can’t even understand each other.”

“Mm. When I went to the city math competition, the chaperone teachers from different schools could only chat in Mandarin.”

Not because they were being polite—it was just that using their own dialects would’ve been like chickens and ducks trying to talk.

Li Zhuiyuan popped open a can and handed it to Beibei.

Beibei sniffled as he took the drink. After two sips, he started crying and laughing at once.

Li Zhuiyuan couldn’t help thinking: children really are easy to console.

That mix of expressions and gestures—he used to make them too. But he’d always been more focused on the details and pacing.

Other parents might’ve found it adorable or normal. Only Li Lan would keep dragging him to psychiatric hospitals.

Tan Yunlong focused on driving.

Silently, Li Zhuiyuan flipped the paper over. On the back were Beibei’s memories of Granny Yu.

“People were flying in the sky. So many people, flying.”

“Fire people, fire people, fire people.”

“Gone. All gone.”

“Seven dwarfs.”

“Modeling clay.”

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